i thought the government would shut it down. if you're a black radical gangster, but you also portray yourself as a progressive as a panther leader did, you're untouchable. panthers murdered this woman i got to do the books, and that ended my career in the left. i -- i didn't become a conservative for another seven years. i was -- it really took my life a part. i felt guilty about having recruited her, and my world was shattered when i understood that. not only was my -- what i thought were my political allies were murders, and they murdered a lot of people also in this book, and inned radical son, but all my friends were a danger to me because if i said the

panthers were on a ped stool for the left, and if i thought they murdered this woman, they would have attacked me as a cia agent, and a racist, so that was a very unpleasant experience, but it's, you know, it's motivated the next half of my life. that was 40 years ago, and i spent the rest of my life atoning for what i did as a radical and what i was a part of, and that is what you see today. >> i know you -- >> [inaudible] >> just say come to the next e poe say of the teaching. you'll enjoy it. >> david, thank you so much. everybody, let's give david another round of applause. [applause] >> thank you, all, for coming today. i'd like to remind you that books are available for purchase

and custom signature in the lobby, and for those of you that prepurchased your books, they are out there waiting for you. thank you, this concludes our program. please come to the next event when announced. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> welcome to booktv's live coverage from the campus of miami-dade college in miami, florida. our lineup today includes several author talks and viewer call-in segments hearing from pulitzer prize winning historians and the washington post's chief white house correspondent, peter baker as well. now, you can see a complete schedule of today's events at booktv.org, or you can follow us on twitter @booktv, or on facebook, facebook.com/booktv

for schedule updates all weekend long. now, in a minute, the first panel of the day begins. lloyd blunt, jr., and author of history decoded, ten great conspiracies of all times will be participating. you're watching booktv live from the 20 # 13 miami book fair. .. 2013 miami book fair. >> please take your seats. good morning, book fair. [applause] >> i am at miami dade college and we are delighted to share this afternoon, this morning and afternoon with you. it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2013 book fair international. we are grateful for the support

of american airlines and geico and many other generous supporters. i would like to acknowledge the friends of the book fair and i see so many of you in the audience. [applause] .. i'd like to give you an opportunity give generously by texting, and the text information is mbfi, and to donate put in 41444, then press enter. and we're inviting people to donate $30 since we're at the 30th anniversary. so i'd like to turn it over to our introducer, mr. seis shus. the director, please come

forward and thank you. >> good morning, everyone. it's an honor to be here and it's an oddly unenviable and honorable position to have the role of introducing through authors like our panellests this morning. anybody that enjoys having their imagination scratched, funny bone tickled, would know that these three writers are gifts to the english language. this morning the first author is none other than dave barry. let's give him a round of applause. we all know that you can't do justice to dave reside talents by reading his lengthy -- here he is. [applause] >> you just can't do justice to dave's talents by reading his

lengthy biography or merely saying his new work, "insane city," his first adult novel in more than a decade. dave is a humorist who has appeared in 35 newspapers. author of 30 books and win ore of pulitzer prize. like every other okayed in the 305, i grew up relishing reading dave. today we hear from a hometown favorite, dave barry. >> i'm going to keep going. our next author, roy blount. let's have them couple out and give him a round of applause. a master of language and a humorist to boot. roy has authored over 22 books in a wide range from robert e. lee to the pittsburgh steelers. i if you're an npr nerd, like i

suspect you are, you might know hill as a regular panelist on "wait, wait, don't tell me." let's give him applause for that. very call. and as a contributing editor of atlantic monthly. today he has his newest work, "alphabetter juice. or joy of text." give him a round of applause again. >> finally, our last author, brad melt meltzer. give him a round of applause. brad meltzer is a hometown hero who made a career out of others seeing the hero in them. he has a popular history channel show. his latest book, history decoded, at the ten greatest conspiracies of all-time. and in his newes work, brad

requests questions about what is really going on in area 51, and, did john wilkes booth really get away? meltzer is the number one "new york times" best-sell author of "the inner circle." i would be reis no -- brad and his wife brought theater to miami. his latest book just made the best seller's list, and without further adieu that brad is also my big brother, although biology would not reveal it. >> same haircut. >> over to you gentlemen. >> i'm his father. >> go forked. >> thank you so much. if your anytime is shoo, how

many times to do -- >> he told me it's arabic for sword. when you go guy sword? anyway, thank you all for coming outsays morning to the miami book fair, the best book fair in the united states. i want to note one thing. roy and i are in a band called "the remainders", the "rock bottom remainders" we have disbanded but we're going to play at 6:00 today. the whole band will be talking at 3:00. people never heard us perform. we're going to be playing and brad won't be there because he has musical talent, and we draw

the line. anyway, i'm going to talk a little bit about my book, insane city. set in miami. miami is the insane city, and it's about a wedding that goes very wrong, but the thing about miami, is was pointed out, you can't make anything up about miami that is weirder than miami itself turns out to be. i'll give you an example. for my book, it's about a wedding that goes wrong. the couple comes here for his big wedding, and the first day the groom winds up with family of haitian refugees living in his groom suite in the hotel, and he also loses his wedding ring, the only thing he has been entrusted with to an orangutan. i want you to consider a couple things that actually happened in

miami. one is a few years back and one recent, to illustrate my point that if you write about the city, can't get any weeder than the city. the first one goes back a bit, true story, and try to picture somebody writing a novel in with this in it. the chief of police was asked to speak at the gnawing aural meeting of the citizens crime watch group and it was a pleasant evening so they held the meeting outside. on the patio of somebody's hours, and curt, as the chef of police, is explaining how the crime watch is supposed to work and it goes well until the opinion where he is almost hit on the head bay 75-pound of cocaine falling from the sky. that really did happen. a smuggler's plane was come over from the bahamas, intercepted bay custom service jet which was

trying to force them down, to the smugglers flinging these cocaine bails out, and they flung 20-bales out, which set up a treasure hunt in the everglades the next die. my point is if you wrote a novel and you had a scene where the chief of police is almost hit in a crime-watch meeting by falling cocaine, the critics would go, come on. that happened near miami. the other one more recent, one of my favorite things to happen in our neck of the woods, happened earlier this year, february, the python challenge. the python challenge? made national news. we have a problem with pythons here in south florida, and these burmese pythons. they're not supposed to be here. they're supposed to be in burma.

they were brought here as pets. why anybody would want to have as a pet an animal that gets to be 20 feet long and is carnivorous, i don't know. but a lot of people brought -- and then at some point they ran out of crack. wow, we're living with a giant -- so they lit the python go, and the pythons turn out to really like south florida. they're kind of like the people from new york. they just like it here. they're comfortable here. and they reproduce like crazy. a known fact, pythons use to form of protection. that's one thing they're known for. they have no natural enemies at all. they can eat anything. knock can really kill them. the estimate now is there's in the hundreds of thousand of them in the everglades. so we had -- the state of

florida, our state motto in florida, you can't spell it without du of -- duh. had to come up with peninsula. we don't have drone so they came up with the idea, the python challenge, which, again, made national news. basically invited anybody who wanted to, to come down to kill our pythons. although we did make them pay a $25 fee. that ruleses out your lightweights. and you had to take a short online course from the florida state -- python challenge.org. i hope the web site is still up. you had to take an online course. you ask anybody who ever made a living killing big game, how he

learned to do that, a short online course he'll tell you. but i read what they said, and they said -- my favorite part, how to kill the python. i thought you just whacked the head off. that would seem like the safest way but that is not thele correct way to kill a python. supposed to kill i humanely. accomplish the key is you have to destroy the brain because if you don't, if you just cut off the python's head, the python keeps on thinking. they don't say what it's thinking. something along the lines of holy -- shit, where is the rest 0 of my -- just bear the numbers in mind. 1500 people paid the 25 bucks to registered to participate in the python challenge. hundreds of thousands of python. this went on for the entire month of february. the total number of pythons

killed, 68. now, i'm not a biologist, but i'm willing to bet at some point during the month of february a mother python laid some eggs, probably more than 68. the point i'm trial to make it here, the pythons won the python challenge. if we want to win, we have to challenge an animal we can beat. like the man -- manatee. the problem with the manatees, they're not the nuclear physicists of the animal world, and boaters keep running into them. they drive kind of like the way we drive on the highway. everybody drives accord can to the law of his or her original country of origin.

so we have a lot of people just driving -- and for decades now, ever since i've been here, they've been trying to get the boaters to slow down and stop hitting the map -- manatees, i have an idea. instead of slowing the boates down, let's speed the manatees up. get them up to 50, 60-miles-an-hour, so who wins. a couple of boaters get killed in the process. a big worry, i have, and i'm you do, too, what happens if the pythons get ahold of the cocaine. but my point, my point, is that this is the world's easiest city to write novels in, and that's why i live here really. it's why i ended up writing about florida, which is the city in "insane city."

i'm going to now bring up my co-band member, and an extremely southern human being, mr. roy blount, jr. [applause] >> thank you, dave. i'm not from miami, so we had little snakes in massachusetts and not much fun at all. i've written two books now about words, always wanted to write a book about words, alphabet juice and alphabetter juice. i was stoned into doing this by reading a textbook of length with sticks, the notion of the connection between words and their meaning is arbitrary, which doesn't make any sense to me. that would mean that splurge and stint could mean the same thing. stint is a tight little word and

splurge is like that. and i think that words have a lot to do with -- not all worlds but lots of words, the best words -- i'll give you an example -- have to do with how they move through your body. this is a little indelicate, but dave has already said shit. that's because there was a python body behind him. he has a reason. i didn't think he was shot. so, okay, the word piss. i was reading a -- somebody analyzing the word urinate. said it cam from the latin word urinory to urinate, that was the formal literary latin word, and the street latin, regular people used the word pissary, from

which we get our word piss, and the entomologist was going on to say that obviously this is an word at that time captures the sound of the action. and i'm saying, yeah, that's my kind of word. first of all, all the best words come up from the street. and they also sound but it hit me that piss doesn't sound like peeing, unless you do it on a hot rock. in matter of fact the word piss starts out tight, the p, and then ssss, a very bodily word, but all that is more fun to read about than talk about so every now and then in these books i go off into stories about writing i have done. for instance, i wrote a store with with chamberlain. wilt has been gone quite a few

years, but he was a huge man, and i was working at "sports illustrated" and he was going to announce his retirement from basketball. i was standing next to him in an elevator once, and he said something and i turned to answer him, and i was looking at his elbow. and so -- but he was great to work with. not every athlete -- i don't want to shatter any illusions but not every athlete is all that literate. somebody who is interviewing pete rose and said, pete, how many books have you read in your life? and pete gave it considerable thought and said, i've never read a book, not a single book. the guy say, pete, you've written two. didn't count those. and so -- but wilt was

well-spoken, and just my job to write down what he said, and to mess with it a little bit so it looked good on paper. and we got along fine. wilt, you know, had one famous thing about wilt, a great basketball player but also wrote a memoir in which he claimed to have slept -- i guess that's the word -- with 20,000 women. and i know the editor of the book, and the called wilt up after reading this and said, now, wilt, we're doing the math here, and wilt said, well, yaw, i know, there was this one big birthday party. but he was -- he had lived in this house up in bel-air, california, with ceilings about the height of these, which was

commence surety with his stature, and he had an odd deck cure of wolf muzzles. the fur from wolf muzzles, lots of them, sowed together in a herringbone pattern, and he had wolf muzzle carpeting and wolf muzzle upholstery, and it was striking to be surrounded by so many wolf muzzles, and also surrounded by friends. what happened was he had done a story for "sports illustrated" before, and he thought they misrepresented him in the headline. so, he -- the deal was that he had to approve every word in the story and every word in the headline. but his friends were there to protect him, and they weren't as big as he was but big enough to

be his friends, and they're standing around as if i was going to attack wilt at any moment. and i said the story went fine, and the body of the story was fine, and the main headline came in, and it said, quote: my impact will be everlasting. which he had said was the word and he approved that. then, however, the subhead came through. those days mojo machines that you didn't have faxes, didn't have laptops, you would feed a piece of typewritten copy into a thing that was connected bay phone line and it would gradually produce at the other end the mojo machine, a piece of type copy. so, i pull that out of the machine, the subhead, and i was afraid we were going to have a problem because it said: a dominant force in basketball

announces his retirement from the game. and i headed up to wilt to read, and he took it and said, a dominant force? and i said, well, i think the operative term there is dominant and force. a dominant force? and his friends inside really moving around, saying, oh, man. the man was dominant. not a dominant. and i said -- i could see that "the" was not going to fit, so i called back to "sports illustrated" and unfortunately thed it for of the story had left his office, but we had that's great, miraculous almost telephone operator back then

named muriel work could fine anybody anywhere, and she found the -- unfortunately she found -- i was afraid she was going to find him in the ho-ho, which a chinese restaurant, and it was close to building and every fourth drink was free. so i didn't really pay not to have eight if you think about it. and this editor was in about his sixth or seventh, but muriel found him down there, and muriel didn't take any guff off anybody. we had an editor who once slammed down his phone and it rang immediately and he picked inup and muriel said, henry, if anyone in the building slammed his receiver i would have to have brain surgery. so he never wanged his receiver

again. but trait, muriel found -- i said i'm here with wilt and he doesn't want "a dominant" he wants "the dominant." and the answer was, well, i don't know -- and people were yelling, and every now and then a chinese waiter would break in and say, walt you -- what you want? and his friends are walking around saying things like, come into a man's home and tell him, "a dominant." and when i cooperate get -- the wolf muzzles. i was sitting on this couch and could feel the wolf muzzles bristling under me, and i said, wilt, i can't get anything done. and he said, wilt chamberlain

here. and big man, big about -- sort of -- and to my astonishment i was seeing wilt mollified, and i interrupted him and said, who the hell is muriel? [applause] >> so, what i love about miami is only miami thinks that what goes great with wilt chamberlain sex stories and killing animals in florida is dead presidents. that seems like the logical next step for us. i grew up here in south florida, went to highland oaks middle school. thank you for the one person, that pity clap. thank you. go panthers. and in 11th grade,

mrs. sherman, wheels in a tv cart with the tv on it. and win you're in 11th grade you know what that means. it means you're seeing a movie that day. that's the best day of school. free movie. no learning, movie. and she puts nonfront of us -- instead of the educational film shoe puts on this jfk conspiracifully. it wasn't one of the cooky ones. this one said the driver of the limo turned around and shot him. it was interesting. it gas too fast and we would miss the guy pulling -- but she pulse out this movie that does ask the hard questions. one of the logical ones. how does jack ruby bet get past all this police officers to get in a police station and what is oswald doing in russia with two

years unaccounted for. my parents were like piece peat rose -- pete rose, my mom read the eninquirer and the star. my father didn't love hoyt but one-his favorite movies was "all the president's menment" and we watched it over and overful he didn't care about nixon. he loved dustin hoffman and robert red understand kicking ass. that was awesome. but watching this jfk movie for me when i was in the 11th 11th grade, it was like kicking the foundation of my brain. you just go, nixon was big but this is bigger. how do you pull off killing a president it? was my love of history, it was in that moment, and so years later, i became a history major college because i -- i was going to be an english major but i thought, english is pretty useless, but history is really useless as a degree. nothing that would be more

useless. so i went right for that. what happened was, i'd really been very lucky. over the years, people come -- when you do a show like decoded or write books like i write, thrillerred set in washington, dc, no one gets sent more proof that abraham lincoln is gay than me. nobody. we get -- when you fine something crazy, you don't send it to the white house, you sent today me or jesse ventura. here's george washington's frozen head. who would want this. and it's true, lincoln's assassin, john wilkes booth, years ago, his family -- got famous shooting abraham lincoln, dies in a barn 1 -- 12 days later, and i get a phone call and it's from the lawyer who represents john wilkes booth's family. he says the family wants to tell you the story, and the story is that their relative john wilkes booth never died in a barn that dade. he escaped, took on a new

identity, and he is not the bun buried in the coffin. do you want to hear the story, brad? yes, i want to hear that story. i'm very busy here dealing with abraham lincoln's gayness, but i'd like too hear the story. and they tell it -- the best part of the temperature -- an amazing story. one of the best part, actually a lot of the parts of the family all insist that he escaped, and one of the aliases he took on, john wilkes booth was john b. wilkes. if your name is john wilkes booth and your alias is john booth wilkes, you're the worst alias maker, and they have his will and stuff, but the amazing part is on the -- there's one point where the american public is paying real money -- when john wilkes booth dies they mummify the body and people in

america go to carnivals and pay money to see the mummified body of john wilkes booth who killed abraham lincoln. i just said mummy and john wilkes booth in the same sentence. i love this. so i've been lucky enough to see these stories and get to investigate these stories and what we did is we did this book "history decoded." anyone have a copy here? i need a volunteer from the audience. this is a test to see your love for me. anyone have a copy over the snook my relatives are in this audience. they're like, don't... not one copy. i'll take a copy of "insane city." does that work? bring it up. one second. so this is my wife, everyone. so, this is where i get the volunteer from the audience. this is much easier at my book signings.

his name tag actually says "reader." in the front of the book, actually requires the visual part -- we know that people like pete rose like to read and people like pete rose exist, and so we did with the book, you open up -- every chapter has a little secret compartment and you get to pull out the documents. this is actually the letter that john wilkes booth left behind after he killed abraham lincoln, and that is no joke, and we put in every chapter a different document so you can pull it out and read it for yourself. and what i love about that is you get to see the evidence. i was in the national archives treasure vault a couple years ago, and they showed me -- when i go at the the national archives, for me that's they playboy mansion. i love that. and i go there and they hand me thicks document of an oath of allegiance during the revolutionary war that people

signed. to this day if you enlist in the military, we still make you raise your hand and take an oath of allegiance, saying you'll never kill us, and we're unreasonable like that. this oath they happed me was signed by a guy named benedict arnold. right? and that is awesome. right? the thing is benedict arnold is like a curse word. we don't take the name seriously. but in this moment when they hand me this document, i can picture benedict arnold with a pen in his hand signing this, and they were numbered. the first one signed by george washington, and number five was benedict arnold, and it's real. not some boring thing in the history book, and now history is alive. so we count down all the conspiracy and go through them and of course put in the crazy stuff, like ufos and the ufo chapter we h we give you the actual documents the government asked you to fill out if you saw a ufo.

you think our government is doing useless stuff right now? a whole department figured out what the questions should be. did your ufo have blinking lights. check yes, check no. how many ufo's together, if you had three, a triangular pattern? check yes, -- >> god bless america. a whole department, good questions, i like the blinking lights. now you're working. and of course, we count them down not to ruin the end, but, it's the 50th anniversary, we all know because if you don't have a heartbeat, you missed the footage yesterday that it was the 50th anniversary of jfk's death and that's the greatest conspiracy of all time. this book is dedicated to my history teacher, ellen sherman, for what she showed me in 11th 11th grade and i'm still obsessed with it. when you look at the jfk store -- i went across the country, and the first question, the firsthand, was like some guy who blinked a like, want it to ask you about jfk and i was

like -- then i get to dallas, my tour take knows dallas, texas, the motherland on the crazy. and it was the only place where the first question wasn't jfk. he wanted to know about lincoln's mum my. -- mummy. when you look at jfk, we all know that it is the great conspiracy of all-time, and to me, we all know that when you look at it, when you plant the seed of doubt in someone's head, it's almost imfor- -- impossible to honor it. the warren commission said lee harvey oswald eighted align. no conspiracy. a decade later the house select committee looks at thed and says that's wrong. there was a conspiracy. we found four shotted that were fired. found a fourth shot from the grassy knoll. we all know the grassy knoll. i went to the grassy knoll for the first time, and is just

fantastic trip. take your kids. the best part is i really saw -- i guilty the grassy noel, and of cores i'm taking pictures of the grassy noel and then -- knoll and a minute later i'm leaving the grassy knoll and there's familiar live with cute little begin girls and they're taking pictures, and i love judging other people. right? because it's so much easier to judge than to judge yourself. and i'm like, you people are taking pictures at a murder scene. and then i'm like deleting eave picture of myself on my phone. the rope that the grassy knoll is believed to be where the fourth shot was fired -- here's what you need to know -- it not because anyone saw anything. it's because of an audio railroading, and this guy, these two men, this so-called audio experts, white and ashkanazi,

right? no one in virginia gets that joke. in miami that joke kills. in miami they're like -- i got it. i'm with you, meltzer. i like it in virginia, they're wearing the bow ties and are like, i don't get it a bit. and they say it's a shot, it's a gunshot on the tape. and what no one knows is that three years later, kind of the top expert in the country who do audio forensics come in and say these two guys were completely wrong. it wasn't a gunshot at all. it was motorcycle backfire, whatever you want to say. glory a battle of experts but the amazing part when the fourth shot, whatever it was, was fired, was actually a minute after jfk was killed. you know where jfk's limo was a minute later? on the way to the hospital. so, to me, once that sealed of doubt is planted, that's a far -- the grassy knoll, that's what it is. when i -- there are great stories before jfk and the

conspiracy. and of course you do have to ask the hard questions. we do want to know where oswald was when he was in russia and hat he was doing there and the great -- the heart of the great enemy motherland for who years. one of the things in the book is when you get to the jfk chapter you actually get the state department tellex that the state department put it when lee harvey oswald denounced his citizenship. i'm out and i'm going to russia, and you read it. this guy is dangerous. when you look at the date and you actually pull it out of the book, it's dated halloween 1959. four years before he shot jfk, who this guy was they knew, and they were watching him, and that's when history is amazing to read, and because right now, when you look at this story, we all focus on the death and these things, but those details are the most interesting parts of it, including the rope that

jack -- the reason that jack ruby was able to get to oswald by time -- he snuck in there and the only rope he is able to kill lee harvey oswald is because oswalt in that moment said he was cold, and he needs his sweater, and so now it takes him ten minutes to find the sweater, get the sweater, oswald is particular about his size or color. and he gets a sweater, and because he waits for the sweater, that's why he gets shot. an amazing moment of history that doesn't happen if lee harvey oswald sucks up and say it's going to be okay, and those moments are fantastic to find and look at. obviously what the real question is, -- i think when we look at so much information out there about jfk, we also realize how much misinformation. oliver stone -- i love platoon, but did a great disservice to

this country when in his movie, jfk, he purposely mixed facts and fiction so completely. he to this day says that he calls his movie a countermyth. what? i remember watching that movie and going, this is real. and they said that no one has been able to recreate the shot that lee harvey oswald took that day. nobody. and thought, well, if nobody could recreate the shot, pure logic there was another shooter. except for one thing. that shot has been recreated over and over again. cnbc news had -- marine sunshiners up to 500 yards away. jfk was 88 yards away at the furthest point when he was shot. they were showing it over and over again on cable. but people think that's the real story of jfk, and obviously it's not. and i think it is important for

us to reclaim our history. i love that. as for -- i'll leave with you this, my theory on who killed jfk. you thought you would learn something. if you look at it, in the '6sod we thought is was dethe russians and the cubans, and we also thought it was the '60s, we -- rich texas millionaire did him in. in the '7's, we thought the cy cy cy died it flint. the '80s, the godfather movie is peeking, who killed jfk? the mob. decade by decade, who killed jfk is whoever america is the most afraid of at that time. and that's the legacy of jfk. took our hopes to the greatest heights and reveals our greatest fear in his death. conspiracy is a reflex of what we're afraid of.

put 9/11in' youtube and you'll find conspiracy. who do people said? our own government. why? open up the newspaper. i don't need to explain to you why america is afraid of the government. show me a conspiracy and i will show you who you and are what you're afraid of and that's what all conspiracies are, mirror reflection of our fears in that moment. so i know we'll do questions, please ask them. [applause] >> we have ten minutes for some questions, so let's get some good to burn our authors. >> my muss and i -- my husband

and i came in from dallas texas for the book fair. i want to say something about the priceon story which i think is fascinating. we have our own multiplying wildlife, the wild boar, and they invite people to shoot it because it's dangerous. with the python, i can imagine texans coming in to want to be part of the shooting, or however they kill the python, because i see it as booth, bounce, wallace -- they sell manatee stuff like that, too. so it's a comment not so much a question -- the texans come in for this? had to be. >> i certainly hope not. they're welcome to come down and shoot our pythons. we'll come out and -- we could just drive out and run into your boars. we're good at that. >> something about the boars.

>> we drive into buildings down here. we drive into anything. >> okay. but the problem with the boars, if you run into a boar, these wild boars, they're -- >> we're not afraid of your boars, lady. >> they're tearing up farmland and a they're dangerous if you run into them on the highway. >> we dig pits and eat your boars. >> send the pythons to eat the boars. >> very dangerous if you run into them in a dark alley, too. >> james schwartz had a good book come out a couple of years ago called "jfk and the unspeakable." and it was probably the only conspiracy book that has an intersection between thomasmeter z and the writings of jfk. so i'm curious of your opinion of that book, whether or not you noticed anything -- any issues with that book and where you basically stand. >> i believe this question is for dave.

[laughter] >> there's nothing i love more than comment only books i haven't read. the thing -- the best part of it is after the book tour for "history decoded" all it shows my is how many jfk books i have not read. there are great books out there. there's also a lot of theories out there, and even without reading the book, to take nothing away from the author, i'm sure is a genius and a nice person -- are you the author? >> no. >> i always go do my book sign examination i'm like, yes. i love brad meltzer's next book? and they say, mr. meltzer, we know it's you. the one thing i challenge anyone to do is actually look -- there's a little thing that i personally like which is called facts and evidence. i'm picky like that. i think that we can take -- when i was just in dallas, i never

actually seen the book depository, never seen where it was. there are two xs on the ground that mark where he was, and they're painted into the asphalt, and just took them away, three days ago they took them away. dallas was like we decided this would be a good week to repave the road. i'm not joking. three days ago. i know people were tripping over the paines xs on the floor all the time. when you see the book depository, the guy says to me, you know what? this is what your book doesn't explain. how come he didn't take the shot before he made the turn a dealey plaza. not right at hem instead of behind. that's the easier shot. and that's like asking, why do you like chocolate more than your like vanilla. just his opinion. but it wasn't until i got there that you realize, man, it's like shooting ducks in a gallery. it's such a long shot with nothing to protect him on either side. i was struck by, that is the

simple shot. why he didn't take it -- that doesn't mean it's a conspiracy. it's why oswald shoot this way instead of this way. people tend to do, what about this? i can say that -- a lot of things -- what about the fact he almost dropped lbj from the ticket and then lbj was the president. show me the proof. the real answer to your question is, why no one knows, is because of a man named jack ruby, and he moment jack ruby pulled the trigger he took away the one person who would tell us, and if someone came today and said i worked with oswald and i helped him, no one would believe him. that's not where our appetite is. this is a story about america and what we believe and the death of the american dream and what we lost, and i think sadly there's going to be a lot more books written, and i don't think any of them are going to have -- anyone can give us the facts

unless it's a biography by oswald himself, and that's a hell of a book. >> okay. thank you. >> i want to thank all of you for being here today. our authors will be signing books in the green autograph hear -- >> one other last thing. thank you to our host who introduced us, the director of city air miami. if you do not know citiary miami, check it out. city area miami, putting people in schools to serve as mentors. so thank you for doing that. >> i want to thank our authors for being with us today. i know that everyone was laughing tremendously. our next event is also a ticketed event. so, we do have to ask everyone to leave and then come back. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching live coverage of snow annual back fair on the campus of miami-dade college. booktv has been on the air 15 years. we have a full afternoon and evening of events. doctor his goodwin this afternoon, and scott berg, the author of a new autobiography on woodrow wilson. those or two of the authors

you'll hear from. we have several callin opportunities as well. peter baker, the white house correspondent for "the new york times." sher fink who wrote about hurricane katrina and the memorial hospital. those are the call-in opportunities as well. coming up in 15 minutes, lawrence wright will be the chatman hall, and he is talking about his book, a national book award finalist, going clear, about scientology and hollywood, and he'll be speaking in chapman. and then this afternoon mr. wright will be joining us for a call-in segment as well. we're on the campus of miami-dade college. the c-span bus is here. we're passing out book bagsing, so come on down, grab yourself a book bag. you can also follow us and get schedule updates all day long at facebook and twitter.

@booktv is our twitter handle, and facebook.com/tv is our address. the full schedule is available on our web site, booktv.org. as i mentioned earlier, this is the 15th year that booktv has been on the air, and all fall we have been showing you some of our past programming, and we want to show you some of our past programming from miami. here's a little bit of that before the next author. >> problem as a country, and i think all of us hunger for washington to deal with it. and for the news media to bring you as straightforward an account as possible and to hold people to account. so in talking about that i try to trace back, how did we get to this place? and there was -- in my own career in journalism, i've covered energy. the first energy crisis when jimmy carter was president, and had just come to washington a

couple of years earlier. i was recruited by a local station in maryland, to -- in washington to cover maryland because they fuller anybody mo covered the philadelphia democratic machine, held by a man named frank rizzo, had learn enough about corrupt politics to cover maryland. so i was off to the races almost literally. one of the big issues was a federal court case involving the bribery and mail fraud convictions ultimately -- conviction was later overturned -- but the trial on charges of the governor of maryland and involved who had tried to sell a racetrack with some illegal actions supposedly in the interim. it was very colorful. and i was thrown right into this. and eventually the network noticed me and hired me to be general assignment. said nobody is covering energy, theres gas lines, and i vonned

for energy, and the next thing i knew three mile island happened. so i write about how i ended up becoming an unlikely expert on nuclear power. and for the first week of that crisis, nobody sent me. i was in the washington bureau, the energy correspondent-covering from the standpoint of the nuclear regulatory commission, and by the end of the first week, the bureau chief was sending correspondents in every 24 hours because no one knew how much low-level radiation was out there and they didn't want to expose any one person to too much. had not been measured. so all of the guys were going and i wasn't sent, which is another theme of the book. the role of a woman in this business at a time when i first became a reporter in philadelphia and i was told, and tried to get this job right out of college, and i was told there is no room for broads in broadcasting. and that is the way it was. so i volunteered to get an entry

level job, even though i'd been hide in a management training program -- an entry level job in the newsroom as a copy boy, chris the first chapter of "talking back." it involved the midnight to eight shift. all my friends were in medical school and i was working for $50 a week, trying to run coffee to the can -- to exist is in atmosphere, there were demonstrations, the antiwar movement, martin luther king was assassinated, then bobby kennedy 0, cities were erupting and it was a lot to cover and a fascinating time be a reporter. so having learned as much as i could in philadelphia, i was recruited to come to washington as a local reporter for the cbs station and there i was covering the federal bribery trial of the governor of maryland and

eventually was hider by -- hired by the network. what then since then has been a fascinating, fortunate number of experiences covering first jimmy cart carter -- i was the most junior correspondent recruited to help out on holidays and weekends, covering president carter, and that meant going to plains, georgia, for thanksgiving and christmas. well, i don't know how many of you have been to plains. may i suggest that not even rose -- roslyn carter wants to -- that is not true. it is a small town. so small that the nearest best western was in a town up the road. so we would go and accompany the president of the united states when he went to his mother's house, miss lily's house, at 5:30 in the morning on christmas morning to begin opening presents and then go to roslyn's

mom. and they would open their presents there. it was-shall we say, not the greatest assignment a correspondent ever had, but we got to go to sunday school, and i was a pool reporter, covering what the president of the united states would preach on sunday morning, and the pool afforded me to communicate that to all of your colleague. so i worked my way up in television, and eventually after covering energy, three mile island happened, and so five days into that assignment, i realized, as i say, that no one hat sent me. i walk into at the bureau chief roz office and said, just occurred to me i've been waiting and waiting to go to three mile island. i'm in charge of the coverage, and you haven't sent me you. sent all the guys, and he said in his most fatherly well, well, you're of child-bearing age and i didn't want to risk sending you into that zone.

and i found myself saying to my boss, well, if it occurred to you that men's -- are as vulnerable to radiation as women's ovaries? and i was on a plane the next morning. [inaudible conversations] >> now with andrea mitchell from 2005 at the miami book fair international. and on your screen now is a live picture of chapman hall at miami-dade college on the north side of downtown miami. just a few minutes author lauren wright, house recent book about scientology. that will begin at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. so in five minutes or so. mr. wright's book was finalist in a national book award, awarded this past wednesday

night. the winner, george packer, for the "unwinding. " he'll be in our coverage tomorrow. we'll show you a little more from the past as we wait for mr. wright to get started. here's another look back at a booktv shoot here in miami. >> a little bit about where you see our culture going. you're doing what you can do -- i don't mean in general but in terms of reading, are we create agriculture of readers, nonread readers? where are we right now? >> i think the worst thing that is happening right now is we're creating a culture where people don't listen. they don't listen to the other side. there's a quote -- i read an editorial in "the new york times" a couple weeks ago, and it had to do with morality's ability to bind and blind, and it binds people -- you believe

in whatever you believe about abortion one way or the other, or whatever you believe about entitlements or whatever you believe about global warming, but you're incapable of seeing the other side at all. might be any validity, and you take that into congress, and if both sides sit there and just -- they won't bend. they won't see the other side's point of view, nothing happens. and the anger that comes out of that a lot of people are so angry because they just have this -- this is what i think. there's no other way other than my way. >> at it funny. i think reading -- particularly reading about other people's lives, creates a sense of tolerance. >> absolutely. that's the great thing about books right now, more than any other medium that we have. a television -- a television is getting better interestingly. movies -- i mean it's a lot of

the same, same, same, hollywood, cops are bad, delinquents are good. mobsters are good. you know, whatever. it's kind of crazy. but books are the one place where there's such a variety -- as you say you can see other points of view. other ways of looking at the world. what is really going on, i mean, there's a terrific book about the -- about afghanistan, called "the forever war." and you read that book and you get it. you certainly get a really good point of view on what's going on over there. >> i couldn't agree with you more. and i also think that what is happening in terms of getting that selection, it's all about -- there's -- most people don't realize there are hundreds of thousands of books printed each year, and you need guides in order to find those books,

and i'm curious to know what you think is -- how the world of the library and the book store -- how that plays into that and how it's evolving. >> clear live it's evolving to -- they're going to be many more people reading on tablets and whatever. that's a done deal. it's happened. i think the really horrifying thing right now is, it's happened so fast and nobody has taken responsibility for how do we make that transition, in a sense able way? how do we continue to get the tuned of advice that we can get book stores, in libraries. how do we keep that alive? i'm doing an essay right now which has to do with, who is going to save our books? who is going to save our libraries? our book stores? who is going to be responsible for finding the authors who have

created the great american books of the last hundred years or so, and in this thing it lists 50 books, so you -- so the life of this author hasn't gone right, who is going to do that? amazon? seriously. who is doing that? ... internet. ..

and i think it would be nice, i would love to see the president and first lady or whatever. i like that the first lady is out there reminding us that it's good to exercise and not overeat which is a huge issue but that would like to see more in washington. who is protecting books? in europe they do protect books. they protect bookstores and libraries and they protect looks and that's good. germany and the netherlands. they really do protect it a cause they know that is the basis of the culture and the basis of civilization. i don't know that is happening here and i'm not sure where it's going to happen.

>> we are back live to miami for the 30th annual miami book fair and this is the 30th year that the book fair has been held in the 15th year that otb has covered it live. several of the events. coming up in a few minutes will be lawrence wright pulitzer prize winner his most book "going clear" talking about about that in that event is due any minute. we have a full day of coverage and call-in opportuniopportuni ties. you'll be able to talk to peter baker of "the new york times" the chief white house correspondent and his look is called days of fire bush and cheney in the white house and you will be able to talk to sheri fink "five days at memorial" about memorial hospital in new orleans after katrina. lawrence wright will be speaking in just a minute and he will be

joining us for calling. the program is now beginning. >> it our sponsors american airlines and any other sponsors and you can see the list of sponsors on the programs for the book fair. we would also like to acknowledge the friends of the book fair and i'm sure some of you are here and we want to thank you for your continued support. at the end of the session we will have time for questions and answers and the authors will be autographing books as well. as a former teacher ,-com,-com ma this is the point where i into teacher mode and remind everyone to turn off their cell phones. before you turn them off i am asking you to show your support for the book fair by messaging, by texting a friend. text the letters n beatty fi and

the amount you want to donate of course to number 41444 impress center. it's that simple and you will receive follow up reminders. please consider donating $30 in honor of the 30th anniversary of the miami book fair international. now it's my pleasure to introduce mr. jim balzell, the florida bureau chief caribbean business manager for the "associated press" and he will be introducing our author. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. my name is jim balzell and i'm the chief hero ap. it is my great leisure to introduce pulitzer prize winning author, screenwriter, playwright and staff writer for "the new

yorker", lawrence wright back who will be interviewed today by investigative reporter and editor joe childs of "the tampa bay times." childs has written extensively about scientology which is the subject of right now's latest book "going clear" scientology, hollywood and the prison of belief. this week, wright's book was named a national book awards finalists. yesterday it was named -- that's right. applause is good. yesterday it was named one of the 10 books of 2014, the the 10 books of 2013 by the "washington post." right now's investigation draws from more than 200 interviews with current and former scientologist in every few earlier in "the new york times" he called scientology probably the most stigmatized religion in america. based in austin texas wright has written six other books, the looming tower al qaeda and the

road to 9/11 and won the pulitzer prize for general nonfiction in 2007. please join me in a miami welcome for lawrence wright and joe childs. [applause] >> well, good morning. larry, let's begin with a word in the title of the book. "going clear" scientology, hollywood and the prison of belief. scientology devotes a lot of organizational energies to tap into the celebrity culture that is so prominent in the united states today. talk to us about that. talk to us about what you found it while you devoted so much attention to that aspect of the

book. >> scientology was really created as a religion that would use celebrities. it was established in los angeles in 1964 and there was a reason for that. l. ron hubbard the founder of scientology realized that americans really do worship one thing for sure and that is celebrity. where's the capital of celebrities? hollywood so scientology has become one of the major landlords and holiday -- scientology. there was a church publication put out shortly after the founding of the church with a roster of perspective celebrities that included people like bob hope, walt disney, marlena dietrich, howard hughes some of the most famous people in the world but those are the kinds of people who they sought to use as pitchman for their new

religion. celebrities did come to the church. they built a celebrity center so celebrities would feel at home there and in some of the early people that came into the church where rock hudson passed through apparently he got very upset when he was the middle of an auditing session and he needed to put more money in the parking meter and they wouldn't let him out of the room. he stormed out of never came back. gloria swanson was a faded movie star of silent movies. later people like leonard cohen and andy ben elvis presley made a stop. he didn't stay in the church but his widow and daughter are still prominent members. the idea was celebrities are useful.

they become megaphones for advertising the church and its benefits. if you look at the people that have been their spokespeople like john travolta and tom cruise, each of these guys at one time were a number one movie star in the world and that's a very powerful lure to young people who have gone to hollywood and are solicited by the church to come to the celebrity center to see how to get an agent or how to get ahead in the business. if they look at who is in the church, they think maybe i could be a star as well. >> it okay now let's hear you talk more specifically about tom cruise. he has emerged in the last 10 to 15 years as one of the essential pillars of scientology.

to the point now where scientology is an organization, its reputation and influence as tom cruise reputation and vice versa mr. cruz's reputation influences and affects scientology. just how powerful is he in scientology and what roles does he play for the church? >> tom cruise has been the visible face of scientology for decades now and there is no more famous or influential scientologist in the church since elron hubbard created it. from the beginning the church wanted some exemplary figure. they could stand for the church. they didn't get bob hope and they didn't get walt disney but they did get tom cruise and they really got him. a very devoted member of the church.

and david miscast as the leader of the church now says every minute and i forgot that the figure is that some 5000 people are awakening to the idea of scientology because of tom cruise with no way of knowing how they evaluate such a statement that there is no question that people know but scientology because of tom cruise. of course when you use a celebrity megaphone, you are tied to their behavior and sometimes that's not always and it managed with an organization that is represented by a celebrity. out of all the celebrities in scientology, i think no one bears the greater moral responsibility for demanding change inside the church and the abuses that are taking place at the upper level of the clergy. no one has been offended

materially more than he has. you know inside the church there is a clergy is called the sea organization. they are people who have signed contracts for all you near sub service. they are paid $50 a week. many of them joined his children i mean really as children, or lee young children and their whole lives are devoted to serving this organization you know, with unbelievably long work weeks with no money at great pride nation and a number of them have done work for tom cruise. they built a hangar for his airplanes, a limousine. they took the body of a limousine and handcrafted everything in it.

they fixed up his houses and even polishes light olds. he derives all of this benefit in a way that no other member does and he is a very close friend of the leader. all the physical of use that your paper has chronicled and i have talked to a number of people as well who have told me they have been physically beaten by the leader of the church, and that number of people who have been confined in punishment camps. i think the church is headed for an accounting but it's not going to happen most people like tom cruise who have been standing in the church demand it. >> you used in the title but words prison of belief so now let's get you talking about the controls that scientology exerts over its members, with its

clergy but also his parishioners. >> it i appreciate that you separated those two things because there are two different different -- it's almost like two different churches in some ways. they are public people. they are people that go into the church of scientology and you know the truth is they might go in and they get something out of it and they leave, many of them to and they may be followed by telephone calls and nailers for the rest of their lives but essentially they can walk away from the church. and then there is another level of membership which is the celebrities who are public members that it's not as easy for them because they are often asked to be the public face of the church and to make declarations to come to florida and testify about drugs and drug use and so on and they put their

and promoter on the behavior of the church and it's not so easy to walk away. inside the church is this clergy that i spoke of. we don't know how many people are actually in it. when i was doing my research at one point they told me it was 5000, 6000, got up to 10,000. have you ever gotten an estimate from the church on how many members there are? >> yeah, 6000. >> 6000, okay. take their word for it. inside this seat or the people that go in often as children, they have very little education. they have no money because their resources are essentially $50 a week. they are cut off from their family unless their family are members of the church.

they may not have driver's licenses or passports and many of them are stationed in the headquarters in this desert in southern california, a 500-acre compound surrounded by high fences with razor wire and motion detect or send guards, supposedly to keep people from breaking into the compound but it also effectively keeps people that are there and find. around different places in the world, where scientology has a presence, there are what are called rehabilitation project forces. they are reeducation camps for people that have strayed in their thinking or their behavior who are in this c board and the headquarters, at one point there

were two double wide trailers very together to make an office suite and in 2006 david ms. castor which took the furniture out of their and he began confining his upper-level executives, the top people in the church so they would go through this self-criticism kind of chinese communist behavior. it's not like for a weekend. the nominal leader of the church is an elderly man. he has been in there for seven years. they sleep on sleeping bags and their being max locked out of ducats and make it out once a day for a shower. there's a lot of physical abuse that takes place and a lot of emotional abuse as well.

it was in your paper the first time that you wrote about the music of cheers episode which i think to me it crystallizes the prison of belief better than anything i know. one night david appeared with a jam box and he had chairs brought in and he said does anyone know what musical chairs means? in scientology is a term that has to do with frequent changes and more than 500 people had their job shifted around in the last couple of months so that's what they thought he was talking about. finally someone said it's a game and they explain how you put a circle of chairs and people walk around and there is one chair fewer than the number of people there are so when the music stops everybody -- is for the chairs and a person

that is standing is out of the game. miscavige said the last person who gets to sit down and stay. everybody else is kicked out of the sea org or if your wife is not in the sea org you will be divorced or sent off to some remote sea org location. he even had airline tickets printed up in a scientology travel office in these far-flung locations and u-haul trailers right in. this game went on for hours. as the number of chairs diminished, fights broke out in clothing was torn and chairs were broken. people were fighting to stay. that's the fascinating part of this. he was offering them freedom and they were willing to fight each other for the opportunity to

stay in confinement in the whole as they call it, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and being slop out of a bucket. to me that defines a prison of belief. >> lets get you talking about how outside agencies, law enforcement agencies are shielded from penetrating and pursuing some of these abuses. so much of what you have heard so far ladies and gentlemen is written in scientology scripture o. rob hubbard wrote millions of words is scientology scripture. >> he has the "guinness book of world records" and this is a writer. i have to take my hat off. more than 1000 titles of his but when someone, some member of the religious order expresses a

desire to leave they could be put on punishment detail or work detail and then be examined one-on-one for hours at a time. it is a religious practice in scientology. when someone decides i don't want to endure this and they scaled the fence that larry told you about and run away, going after that person and bringing them back is a religious practice. and speaking speak to how defensible that is from a legal standpoint in the first amendment standpoint. >> when i started my investigation i ran into an fbi investigation that was going on simultaneously in some of my sources were talking to the f. via and some were talking to me. you know i got them to tell me what they were telling the fbi. the fbi was mainly looking at the space i was talking about,

gold base and on the basis of human trafficking, people being confined against their will. human trafficking is normally something they use with sex traders but here the church was vulnerable on this. they even apparently got the tail numbers on tom cruise's airplanes in case he helped the stavich maker make a run for it which is the greatest oj moment that you can have. the fbi flying after this little trick plane that tom cruise is flying. but the members of the former executives who had escaped from scientology told them, if you or break into the hole and open the door, they would say it's all

sunshine and seashells. we are happy here and we are here for her own accord. the story i just told you exemplifies that but the fbi was still investigating it up until the suit in colorado, the headley suit. two former members of the sea org had sued the church alleging physical abuse in the case of marc hadley. he had been beaten by the leader of the church and his wife claire claimed she had been forced to have an abortion. they work years and years from the age of children when they went in. they have been confined. they both had to escape. a judge ruled that all of these were religious practices. there was little that law enforcement could do about it.

the fbi gave up on their investigation. what were they to do? that is one of the reasons i hold people like tom cruise accountable, because we are in an odd spot. joe and i can write about it. we can't prosecute it. we can just bring to public attention is actually happening and going on. the law enforcement agencies are stymied and the irs, which is another agency that can make a difference is coward. so there is very little -- there are very few avenues for actual reform inside the church except those celebrity megaphones turn around and face the other direction. >> let's switch gears slightly and talk about not the religious order and not the people who sign the billionaire contracts and also live --

they know they are going into an isolated setting so it's not a surprise to them. let's talk about the people who are in civilian life, the people who lived down the street from me, from you perhaps in our so-called fresheners. could they read your book and if not why not? the video of this presentation is posted on the internet. could they go to their computer and see this video? if not, why not? >> if you use the verb could, yes they could. if they would, they won't. to me it's like a flock of words. it's fascinating and a little frightening to watch how uniform they are in their reactions,

even people who aren't under the threat of confinement. i have spoken on a number of occasions on scientology and i've been on the number of radio shows and so on and i have only had one scientologist actually colon and no scientologist ever identified with current practicing of member of the church stand up in a group like this and if there someone here that would like to do that i'd be the two top you about it. one person wrote a complaint to my editor and i sent her a note saying, will have you read the book? no. would you like to? no. and i said i would be grateful if you would quit making accusations that are about the book that you have not read and please let me send it to you. no.

finally she continued to engage me because there was something going on with her obviously. a lot of people who are in scientology are in a turbulent frame of mind because they're so much agitation happening inside the church. she finally did say that she would let me send her the book but it had to be in a plain brown envelope so her husband wouldn't know. years ago, the church put out -- offered dvds and cds to their members that would patrol the internet and make sure lots anything that would be derogatory towards the church so they wouldn't have to hear it. in scientology terms, this is all just bad information and

what do you know spiritual goods that don't listen to it. for the most part in my experience, scientologist take that very seriously. they don't want to hear anything bad about scientology. they close their eyes, their minds and their heirs. >> the person to whom you may have sent that book, his or her spouse would have a spiritual duty to report that person. >> that's right. and there are consequences even for members who were not in the sea org. if that happens you will have to go in for extra auditing and they will suggest that you take these courses that are very expensive and it rounds up the real tab. also, what's more threatening is

the possible loss of friends, family members and members of your community that you depend upon who will turn against you if you are seen or thought to be reading material that is bad for your spiritual health. >> now we will switch the daycare talking about the greater cytology of a run hubbard. this great book achieves on many levels and one of the great accomplishments is the depth of information about l. ron hubbard i have read a lot of stuff about l. ron hubbard and i've learned so much reading larry's book. it seems to me you set out to do a biography on a run hubbard and you achieved that. what drove you to drill down into him? why did you think that was so important and what were some of the oh wow moment to head along

that road of pursuit? >> well i have a theory as a writer that in order to tell a story about the very esoteric and complicated world you need what i call a donkey. a donkey sounds like a disparaging terms but a donkey is a very useful beasts of burden and he can take you, the reader, into a world that you have never been in and carry on his back a lot of information. so if you have a fascinating donkey, the reader will take the ride. i had two main donkeys in my book. one was paul haggis, the academy award-winning writer and director who dropped out of scientology after 34 years, who could tell me about the world of scientology in modern times and the other was run hubbard, one of the most intriguing people i

have ever had the opportunity to write about. one of things that is so fascinating about him is he really did live a fascinating life. a very compelling and ingesting life that he felt the need to make it more fascinating than it actually was. and he created legends about himself that are at the basis of dianetics which was his self-help there be are three that he created and later the church of scientology. the most glaring one of these is the legend that after world war ii, he was lying dead and crippled and confined in a naval hospital in the bay area in california. madison could not help him so he

developed techniques that he later called dianetics that healed himself. now, when there was an occasion a scientologist came to "the new yorker". tommy davis and his wife the chief spokesperson for scientology and for chief lawyers along with 47 volumes and binders with material to respond to our 968 facts checking queries. it was quite a day, but at some point tommy davis the spokesperson said if it's true, that l. ron hubbard lied about his condition, then he was lined up and crippled than dianetics is based on a lie in scientology is based on a lie.

on "the new yorker" site of the table are eyebrows all went up because this was a checked fact and we had a happy freedom of information requests with the va and the military records in st. louis. we sent an intern down there to get the 900 some odd pages that they have on his military record he had conjunctivitis and arthritis and that's it. it wasn't exactly blinded and crippled but in a way you could see where he was going with that and i don't know that he was ever healed of those injuries but unfortunately for the church they are stuck with the statements that hubbard made about himself. what is fascinating about him, he's the most polarizing

individual. people either think he's the greatest thing they have ever seen or he is the creepiest. there are some political figures that reminds me of. [laughter] but hubbard really did have a compelling manner for a lot of people and he would spin the stories about his past lives and in a very humorous manner, in a seemingly erudite manner. nobody ever seemed asking where these stories came from. one incident where i had someone say they did ask him and they said the response was, let's not get into that. >> the current scientology leader david miscavige has been in charge for 27 years now get he is still in the enigma to many.

there has been controversy surrounding the church in recent years and a lot of it is controversy that surrounds him personally. you devote a lot of energy to reporting on david miscavige. was that a design as well here? >> david miscavige is the brigham young of scientology. oftentimes you have a religious entrepreneur like joseph smith who created mormonism and many new religions are created but they don't survive after the death of the charismatic leader because there is no person to follow. david miscavige saved scientology and in some ways he saved it from the mistakes that

hubbard made. hubbard decided for instance not to pay his taxes for the church and by 1993 the church owed a billion dollars which at the time it did not have and now it does. at the time it only had $125 million was facing an existential moment. miscavige decided we have to get our tax exemption so how did they go about it? they launched 2400 lawsuits against the irs and individual agents. they hired private detectives to follow agents around and go to conferences where the trail people and find out who is drinking too much and whose sleeping around and they would publish argument -- articles in their magazines and pass them out at the headquarters of the irs. they intimidated the irs.

whatever the merits of the case, those were the facts that surrounded their getting a tax exemption. they owed a billion dollars. the irs not only did they find him $12 million but they forgave the $5 billion gave them the authority to decide which parts of the church are tax-exempt and even made l. ron hubbard's novel scriptures so those are also tax-exempt. it was such a thoroughgoing victory. it's hard to imagine. bear in mind the irs is not the best equipped agency to determine what is a religion and what is a cult but they are the only agency that has that authority. once the irs made that finding,

the vast protections of the first amendment guarantees religion surrounded scientology as it does all established religions and protects it from many of the legal recourse as we would ordinarily turn to. >> one more question and we will see what questions you all have. i'm going to ask a question that is probably on the minds of some people here. this book is not a flattering portrayal of scientology or i'll run hubbard. he is revered within the church so larry wright, after the publication of this book how is it been for you? >> well joe you know, you have been through the same thing. you have a lot of legal threats, a lot of legal threats but no actual follow up on that. they did publish one of their freedom magazines, "the new

yorker" story that preceded the book came out on our anniversary and every year in february around valentine's day "the new yorker" has its original cover. it's an old man and a top hat and monocle looking at a butterfly in the name is eutis tilley. that is the name of the carrot here. so that was the issue in which the paul haggis profile occurred so freedom magazine is a scientology magazine. they came out with a cartoon that was eutis tilley and it was me with magnets coming out and it was a slam at me in the magazine and even took shots at the fact checkers which annoyed me a lot.

i think they were feeling especially stung because the fact checkers at "the new yorker" are really good. there is one checker on the article full-time for six months and at the end we had six checkers including the head of the checking department going through all of this stuff. there is a way of writing about a litigious and vindictive organization as you note very carefully. that is the way you go about it. now i will say they stopped my publication. in britain they had different laws concerning libel and defamation they threatens us to my publisher and a bat doubt. then pin international the writers organization invited me to come to england and talk to members of the house of lords because they were rewriting their defamation laws. they have done so so i'm hopeful

now that we will be able to publish in england. it was a consideration. when i first talked to the editor of "the new yorker" well before paul haggis dropped out of the church we talked about my interest in writing about scientology and we were mindful of the fact that the church had for instance one time magazine did didn't exposé in 1991, the scientologists sued "time" magazine and the scientologists lost every step along the way all the way up to the supreme court that it was the most expensive suit that time magazine ever defended trade at a time years and i didn't want to put my magazine through that nor did i want to spend 10 years giving depp assertions. if you think there's a chilling effect, there is a chilling effect but i think now more people are writing about

scientology. i want to commend you and your paper for all the work you have done that has opened up the possibility of seeing inside the church in the way it has never been as visible before. >> when he says there's a chilling effect this is a guy who wrote about al qaeda. [laughter] >> if al qaeda ever got the lawyers, they are a real dangerous organization. >> do we have questions from the group here please? [applause] >> i would like to ask you, what do you think the secrets are behind the very quick divorce that tom cruise god and very little has been said about it and how do you feel surry's life is for the future and is there

any danger for her in regard to scientology? >> i'm not an expert on surry and all that but tom in a recent depositions that scientology was an his divorce, exit price. but my experience is this has been unusual for me as a reporting. sometimes it's hard to get to people but i have never been involved in the story with so many people that i want to talk to that have signed nondisclosure agreements that are incredibly punitive. if somebody who was close to tom cruise for instance were to tell her story, it would be millions of dollars of regrets that would be facing her. i'm not saying that is the truth with his former wives but they have all been very quiet. people around cruz and people

better close to scientology often have signs of -- >> this is a basic question. i would like read to tell me a little bit about what is their belief system? they are called the church. does that mean that they believe in god, do they believe in jesus? do they read the bible or are they just hubbard worshipers and they just read his looks? do they have it create? you know, the 10 commandments and where to scientology come in? >> those are not naïve questions. it's interesting because on the one hand the church bills itself as a religion. on the other hand it bills itself as science. that is where scientology comes in, a technology that this is not really a belief system. this is a step by step guaranteed to succeed a letter to spiritual enlightenment.

and i'll run hubbard had a perfect understanding of the human mind and if you just follow the steps, then you will achieve the kind of enlightenment. god doesn't play a big role in scientology. there is a place for him. there are eight dynamics and i won't go into too much of the terminology that at the very peak there's a place that is very infinite but it's not a very cleared out place. scientology will tell you that you can be a southern baptist or jehovah's witness and still be a scientologist but in practice that doesn't seem to be the case. people are urged away from other belief systems in order to be fully subscribers into scientology. >> yes, you touched on the entertainers and we read a lot about that in the tablets in newspapers. i was wondering about their

counterparts in the political scheme of things at both national and state levels and how much influence do they have like the attorney general i think one time did bring up whether they were at coulter not in a decided that they were not at calls and they would be tax-free. can you touch on that? >> yeah especially celebrity members of the church have testified as they did here in florida, right job? if i remember correctly, the bill had to do with especially children that they wanted to prevent teachers from telling parents their children might be autistic is basically correct in what possibly entail a jail sentence for the teacher.

kirsti alley and some other scientologists came to testify here in front of the florida legislature. scientologists like chick korea and john travolta have testified in germany about the oppression of the scientology there. in particular i think travolta had a meeting with bill clinton and this took place at a time when travolta was playing bill clinton in primary colors and clinton told him, i had a roommate who was a scientologist and he was a really good guy. so at that point, the state department had written letters to foreign governments chastising them for oppressing the church of scientology so they did have an effect.

>> i apologize but we are out of time. i know. this is the worst job. i do apologize. [applause] mr. wright wilby autographing his book and the green autograph area below the escalator. the next event is also a -- so we do need a few minutes to prepare the room so thank you for being here and thank you for your support of miami book fair international. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> your watching live coverage of the book international on the campus of miami-dade college on our side of downtown miami. this is booktv's 15th year covering this festival and as you can see the c-span us is here on location. if you happen to be in miami and you want to stop down you can pick up the bag while you were down here as well. throughout the day we are going to have author events on the chapel where you saw lawrence wright that we will also be doing offer collins. joining us on our makeshift set is sheri fink who is the author of this book, "five days at memorial".

what is the timeline of your book? what are you talking about? >> i'm talking about those five days in 2005 when the levees broke and looking specifically at what happened over those five days at one of the hospitals that was rented by water. >> what whitest memorial hospital? >> memorial medical center was one of those long-standing community hospitals that have been built in 1926 and it was the place people went for a storm. the staff would sometimes go there even if they didn't have to work. they brought along their pets sometimes because of course if you're going to work a hurricane you need somewhere for the pets and they brought family members and sometimes checked in extirpation and who they thought might not be safe at home. this was a place that everybody thought was safe in the storm. >> so they would write out a hurricane such as a 1965 hurricane?

>> yes but what happened was this hospital had several vulnerabilities that i've since learned many american hospitals do in flood zones and one of them was that elements of the electrical power system where a low threat level so when the water start approaching the hospital they knew they had to evacuate. the city party -- power was gone and they were relying on backup generators and they knew within hours all power could fail. the first dilemma was one helicopter stare at it landed on the routes to take people, there were 250 patients in and 2000 people in this hospital. who do you rescue first when you know you have hours left of power so that was the first dilemma. it also started getting very hot inside the hospital. another vulnerability american hospitals have i'm sorry to say is that they are not required for that backup power systems to build the keep air-conditioning or the heating depending on where you are in the country functioning.

even before all power was lost it was august, it was new orleans and it was hotter than it is here in miami. started getting very hot in that hospital making it difficult for the patients and the people working there. >> where is memorial in new orleans? >> it's uptown in new orleans but it's 2 feet below sea level. new orleans is like a hole in it dips below the sea level like a bowl. many of the hospitals there weren't similar situations. >> what is from memorials reputation? >> the reputation was excellent. this was a place where people were proud to work, where the giants of medicine in new orleans have walked the halls. people were proud to work here. it was a place where nurse would work and have the child and the child grow up and work in the same unit. there were multigenerational families who had worked at this hospital. it was a real family and

community and very well regarded. it been a baptist hospital originally known as southern baptist and with the changes in medicine that we saw in the 90s and the 2000 it was bought by a for-profit company. tenet health care. >> is memorial opened today? >> is under new ownership and back with a baptist name. >> the same building buildings? >> the same buildings here that was just there the other day and they just reopen the neonatal icu and a place women would go to have their babies. many people were born at baptist hospital and they have made improvements in their electrical system but unfortunately hospitals for example in the city where i live now in new york do not have to make these improvements until the year 2030 because we discovered with hurricane sandy that we have the same vulnerabilities and there are many places better in flood prone areas that do not have their power systems protected.

this hospital now doesn't they felt secure enough to bring the babies back. eight years later so it took a very long time for this rebuilding to recur. sheri fink talk about the dates were talking about what happened on the first aid. >> the first day everybody arrived. the next morning the storm hit. a severe storm and it was scary but when he talked to people that is not what they remember. they remember the third day, the day that the levees failed at the hospital, that the water started coming up. the fourth day all power was lost and things became very critical. you can imagine in an american hospital we relied as doctors and nurses rely on power to do just about everything whether running an i.v. that used to run by gravity and now there are electrical pumps to our medical record system which are not digital and that doesn't work when the power fails. think about ventilators and

people who rely and machines to help them breathe. those failed and the doctors had decided to get the neonates off, for little babies as well as some of the intensive care unit patients but they also designated a group of patients to go last. some of the sickest patients and patients with two not resuscitate orders. we have since learned in america that this may not do the best way to do triage, to figure out why you get the resources that people need to people in a crisis. sometimes we need to allocate those resources are rationed them but they do not resuscitate order doesn't necessarily mean someone can't benefit care or would want to not he saved at the expense of others which is what the doctors here assumed. of course they had to make this decision on the fly. they were tired and they were hot and they were scared. these patients, it was decided that they would go last and they would imagine all power fails.

the move the patients out of their rooms into staging areas inking helicopters would be coming but at some point everybody was up on the rooftops. many people did not evacuate the city. room for those images of people waiving anything they could to try to get helicopters to come and rescue them. the pilots had to decide to a rescue someone off of the rooftop who might not even have water or go to this hospital where presumably they have supplies which they did. fortunately the helicopters dropped off a medicine that they needed. they had water in made for this is sometimes the helicopters came very slowly. these patients got sicker and sicker and some the staff grew very afraid. >> sheri fink 2000 people in the hospital when katrina hit. how many people were evacuated five days? >> so what happened was through just incredible work and creative thinking there were

doctors and staff members who went out and knew that there were trailers in the neighborhood and with the water rose they hotwired one of them and started getting some of those able-bodied people out. dry ground was only eight blocks away so they could vote them there and that would be a way to rescue them. they got pets out that way. originally they started euthanizing pets because they felt they can't fit them on a helicopter and they were trying to take families impatient members out through creative thinking they were able to extend those resources and bring boats to the hospital. i would say one of the big lessons of "five days at memorial" is you or me or anyone could be in a disaster where official helped us and come fast enough and it's really to that creative thinking in the preparedness of you and me to care for ourselves, our family members, our community that is really crucial. you saw it in the philip

institute. the help comes too late so there's a family too who is outside of new orleans five her way past the points and got to the border the city and found some guys was swamped boats and directed them to the hospital. saved not only enter husbands mother but also many people at this hospital. overall there was an incredible effort. the coast guard came with helicopters. no air traffic controllers gain their lives to land on this helipad that hadn't been used in years. what was found afterward 45 bodies at this hospital, about 40 patients who had died and of those 45 during or after the disaster and that is when this question began, why did so many more patients die at this hospital than at many hospitals in a similar situation? very soon after, some of the staff of the hospital came and spoke with the media, spoke also

with investigators from the state and said we think something happened here that was not right. that you now just imagine you are in a situation and patients are starting to die in you think you might not save everyone. you categorize a whole group of people as last and you think they may not survive at all. this question began circulating in the hospital should we be thinking about putting these patients out of their misery? >> by the way the phone numbers on the screen and if you'd like to participate in our conversation was sheri fink who is the author of "five days at memorial" in a pulitzer winner in the medical doctor we are talking about hurricane katrina and medical ethics 20258838058 53881 in the mountain pacific and further west timezones and you can also send a comment or question via twitter at booktv is our twitter handle.

back to my question. >> yes, so several people started talking about this according to what i investigated and looked into, how this all played out. it was interesting because even at the time there was great dissension over this. there were people on the staff of felt like this was the right thing to do and some of them briefly spoke to me. i say briefly because ultimately there were arrests involved because there were people who thought yes we should give these patients some medicine and help them to their death essentially. .. wife and said i don't think i'm going to see you again, he thought he had to get out of that hospital and what would happen to the patients. >> which doctors this? >> he was -- he passed away recently, but he was a critical